Police officers are by nature competitive, and law enforcement is too varied to expect all officers to feel and act like they are playing on the same team all of the time in their interactions with members of other departments or agencies. However, it isn't too much to expect that all members of the law enforcement profession behave like they are ...

Handling death notifications is a necessary part of the job that few law enforcement officers enjoy. It can be traumatic for the officer, as well as for the family members. Delivering a death message is a duty that is vitally important with far-reaching ramifications in people's lives. Handled poorly, extreme situations can develop. Family members and others advised of the passing ...

(Dedicated to all of my teachers… To all who instructed me in my career... and to all who have instructed Peace Keepers... and to those who currently instruct Peace Keepers.) The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with the educational process. He argued, "What's a student going to learn ...

Having described the types of behaviors and techniques associated with riot behavior, both group and individual, it is now important to discuss those techniques that law enforcement must employ if it is to successfully contain and control this behavior. Like the individual and group activities that are a part of riot behavior, riot control involves actions both by the individual police ...

DeCollege and University Police and Investigators Conference As a law enforcement officer you should know the importance of the varying degrees of training. Law enforcement officers can select areas of training that they may be interested in or select training that fits their environment or the job role they are currently in. I have attended many training classes both at our ...

The identification of post-traumatic stress disorder in the context of the police use of deadly force is one example of how mental health professionals have made a major contribution to law enforcement (Zeling 1986). Dr. Michael Roberts, a consultant to the San José, California, Police Department, was one of the first to call attention to the postshooting syndrome. He pointed out ...

h4. Officers kill themselves at higher rate than general population The seasonal spike in suicides during the Christmas/New Years holiday period is no secret to veteran law enforcement officers. What may come as a surprise is the high number of officers that, to use the old phrase, "eat their gun." The recent suicides of two New Orleans Police officers during the ...

Police officers not only must be able to recognize abnormal behavior and mentally ill persons, but also must be prepared to guard, restrain, or take into custody people whose behavior suggests the presence of a mental illness. The following are suggestions for handling these difficult situations. **1. Calls involving known emotionally disturbed individuals should be answered by more than one officer.** ...

It has taken a while for me to write this in response to numerous requests from police and fire dispatchers because, frankly, I've never been a dispatcher myself. So I had to do a lot of thinking about what dispatchers have told me about their own experiences with police stress, and my own experiences at the other end of the radio. ...

I haven't written about this most common (ranking about equal with depression in terms of numbers afflicted) of the unfortunate manifestations of the human psychic mechanism until now because it seemed there was ample information available. And there certainly is: books, magazine articles, cyberpsychology web sites and periodic television specials. However much information there is, it doesn't help police officers who ...

One o'clock in the morning. July. You're a white cop patrolling an affluent section of town. As usual there isn't a car on the road. Typical. Inaction waiting for action. You notice a Mercedes 300D pull into a large colonial and observe a man, woman, and two children exit, open the trunk and begin to take out suit cases. "Back from ...

9/22/01 Like most Americans I watched in horror as we experienced this centuries Pearl Harbor. This was an unprovoked attack to the very heart of our values and what we hold dear. There is no way that I as a therapist who has worked with hundreds of "stressed out" police officers can offer much sage advice to readers who have suffered ...

Women in the United States live on average 7.2 years longer than men. Men working in high stress jobs like law enforcement, where they are subject not only to police stress but to maintaining a veneer of self-reliance come hell or high water, die on average even sooner. If you take to heart what I'm about to write, it is more ...

With the recent updates in funding in Homeland Security, one can only help wonder how evenly the funds will be distributed. Currently upgrade to the maritime port security initiative have stepped up with awesome and new technology however, we must begin to prepare for old history that tends to show itself over again. In this day in age, the piracy in ...

Early reports on the accuracy of the polygraph technique were largely anecdotal. For example, if ten suspects were administered a polygraph examination on a particular crime and one of them failed and subsequently confessed, the technique was reported to be 100% accurate. Once proper research methodology was applied, where random polygraph charts of verified truthful and deceptive suspects were blindly scored ...

With more than 3,000 CERT teams in the US and 1,000 teams internationally, this article discusses what it means to be a 21st Century CERT Operator. I’m writing this article in response to a number of inquiries I’ve received from the field by clients and attendees who have heard me speak or have been trained by US C-SOG SOU teams. What ...

h4. Final Phase in a Holistic Fitness Approach The nation's interest in fitness has not gone unnoticed by law enforcement administrators. Initially many managers focused on weightlifting, but the gym phase is the final step in a holistic fitness program. "Fitness makes sense for the officers, their employers and the public," said Elizabeth Bondurant, a lieutenant with the Plainsboro (N.J.) Police ...

One of the few benefits to come out of the Vietnam War was the acknowledgment that tough guys do cry, and that it's good for them. Unfortunately it took ten years for the Veterans Administration to recognize this and begin to set up programs to help Vietnam vets whose lives were in a shambles because of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). ...

Suicide epidemic spreads through police ranks. The lengthy two part article by David Armstrong covered all the aspects of police suicide, though I was disappointed at first to see what I thought was a hint of a negative slant given to the well known fact that the statistics on police suicide are unreliable because of how many police suicides are reported ...

Between 5% and 10% of people in the United States will, at some point in their life, have a bout with depression severe enough to be of clinical significance. It is estimated that only a third of all those who are clinically depressed receive adequate treatment. It is not unusual for a therapist, or physician, to recommend a trial on an ...